Date: Sat, 26 Oct 2002 18:48:05 -0400 (EDT)
From: Jack Morava <jack@chow.mat.jhu.edu>
Subject: exotic topoi

Hi:

Maybe it's worth noting, for use at lunches and teas with colleagues
from other departments (and Deans), that `topos' is an important technical
term in modern literary theory; I looked on google and found, at
<www.valdosta.edu/~jlcambe> for example, the following quote:

Topos: a mental `place' where an argument can be found, or the argument
itself [Aristotle, Rhetoric II.23].

I believe the underlying image is of some well-thought-out landscape or
context, as in the `topos' of the bored young wife (eg in Anna Karenina or
Madame Bovary) or the `topos' of lost orphans (Hansel & Gretel, or Lemony
Snicket). This is not really so far from the mathematical usage, especially
the idea of a manifold as something covered by an overlapping system of
coordinate systems.

For mathematical purposes,

    <math.ucr.edu/home/baez/topos.html>

(which also came up on google) might be more helpful.

I doubt somehow that literary topoi have exponentials. They might
be Cartesian closed, though...

                             (:+{)}